Smoke and Mirrors
by MirrorDede
Summary: Xerxes Break catches Rufus Barma using his chain's illusory capabilities to create imagery for self-pleasure, and assists the duke in making one of his fantasies manifest in the flesh. Naturally quite cracky and smutty.


**Summary:** Xerxes catches Rufus using his chain's illusory capabilities to create imagery for self-pleasure, and assists the duke in making one of his fantasies manifest in the flesh. Naturally quite cracky and smutty.

**Words: **2303

**Rating:** NC-17

**Writer's Note:** This is something I've been meaning to write for quite a while now. Hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it! Thanks to total_alias for beta reviewing. (Timing would be to prior Xerxes' vision loss, and I'm thinking it's prior to the revelation of Xerxes' past as well.)

Duke Rufus Barma was feeling a bit tense and unsettled, and decided he needed the rest of the afternoon off. So he locked up his library, informed the servants he'd be accepting no visitors, and shut himself into his private quarters. His wing of Barma manor had several rooms: a bedroom, a dressing room, a washroom and a sitting room. The sitting room was where he stashed his hookah; behind the doors of the sideboard, tucked away amid the extra candles. He rarely smoked anymore, and indeed, it was really only during the most stressful of days that he felt compelled to take that weedy substance into his lungs, with all the surreal and mind-altering effects it invoked.

He placed the hookah on the table in front of him, packed the bowl with the last of the weed, and lit it with the flick of a match. His lips pressed around the mouthpiece and he took a deep drag, held it for a moment, and blew smoke into the air in front of him. The mirror across the room reflected his image, and the smoke blurred it into a haze of hallucinatory distortion. He took another drag, and then another. Then wild ideas came lumbering in, as they often did when he was in this state.

He summoned his chain, Dodo, and bid it create some illusory presences. There was, soon after, a lovely young woman sitting on the sofa across from him, smiling demurely. She was the spitting image of young Sheryl Rainsworth, his long time friend and the woman whose affections he most desired. Under normal circumstances, Sheryl's illusion would have been enough to satisfy him. But as his arousal grew and the effects of the drug began to affect his thinking, he became intemperate. He conjured another lovely young lady and then another. The three women began to get cozy with one other on the couch: snuggling, kissing, and removing each other's clothing. He sat there gazing at this self-created pornography, his pupils dilated, face flushed. His breath unsteady, he took hold of the protuberant bulge in his trousers and then – something unexpected came into his line of vision.

The mirror showed the clearly unmistakable image of Xerxes Break, standing right behind him. Certain he had not conjured the man's illusion, he turned around quickly and his eyes flew open wide at the sight of the white-haired man, live and in the flesh.

"What are you doing here?" he exclaimed, curling his lower body into a ball on the chair to hide his arousal.

"Oh, you left the door to the sideboard open and I thought I'd drop by for a visit. Candy?" Xerxes proffered a wrapped treat, which the duke refused.

If Rufus had been in his right mind, he would have shoved Xerxes out the door and sent a severe reprimand to his employer, the Duchess of Rainsworth. But his normally staid, stoic state of mind was shattered, and drug-induced delirium had lowered his inhibitions. To his eyes at that moment, Xerxes Break was the person he most wanted to see. Everything in the room swirled around Xerxes, enveloping him in a haze of loveliness. His visitor appeared to be the only thing in the room wrapped in stillness and calm.

"If I'm not mistaken," said Xerxes, popping a candy into his mouth, "you are using your chain's illusory capabilities for your own pleasure."

"You'd do the same, if you could," Rufus sputtered, quickly casting the three cavorting women off the sofa into a cloud of dissipated fantasy.

"My Mad Hatter only destroys," he said, tossing his candy wrapper on the floor. "It doesn't create."

"Creation…" Rufus muttered, reaching clumsily toward the table for his fan, which appeared to be sliding back and forth across the table, just out of his reach, "…is my fondest desire."

"More so than knowledge?" Xerxes came around and sat on the chair next to Rufus.

"It depends on my mood." Rufus' face was flushed with heat and he desperately wanted his fan but he just couldn't catch hold of it.

Xerxes noted the duke's trouble with some amusement.

"And right now your mood is?—"

"Extremely agitated," Rufus said through gritted teeth, his forehead growing damp with perspiration.

Xerxes reached out, took the fan in one hand, and Rufus' hand in the other, and then joined the two.

"You're needing this?" he said with a grin.

"Yes, thank you," said Rufus, clearly relieved. He spread the fan out and began to work on cooling his head. "I want to _know_ everyone, intimately. Inside and out…"

"I never imagined you were the sort to go whoring around." Xerxes raised an eyebrow and crunched his candy to bits.

"I'm not!" Rufus protested, his face flushing a deeper shade of pink. "I'm actually rather…inexperienced." He choked out the words then immediately regretted having said them.

"Reeeaaally now!" Xerxes grinned and leaned forward in his chair.

Rufus looked at the other man's smile, and at his teeth, which were surprisingly well kept for one who ate so many tooth-rotting sweets. He gazed at his soft, white hair, and his lone red eye – surprisingly attractive, that color – his clear complexion and his svelte physique.

"That's an interesting facial expression you have there at the moment, Duke Barma," Xerxes commented, pulling his jacket around himself a little more closely.

"Oh?" Rufus continued to undress Xerxes with his eyes. "I was just thinking how exquisitely well made you are."

"I see..." Xerxes looked to the side, unsure how to respond.

Rufus felt as if his heart were beating into the hand that Xerxes had recently touched – the sensation lingered and he wanted more. He still perceived the world swirling around him and became convinced that if he were touching the other man, that bastion of stillness, everything would somehow be normal. So he stood up, stumbled over to where Xerxes was sitting, sat right down on his lap, and threw his arm around his shoulder.

"Well, this is unexpected, Duke Barma," Xerxes said, trying to adjust his legs so the weight of the auburn-haired man would be more comfortably distributed.

"Call me Rufus," the duke whispered, pushing some of Xerxes' hair behind his ear. He leaned into the other man's cheek and nuzzled it with his nose. "Your scent is…intoxicating."

Xerxes' eye opened wide and he grasped the handle of his cane.

"Well, I really must be going Duke Barma…er, _Rufus_." He tried to stand up but the duke clung tightly, his eyes focusing on the wide end of the cane's handle.

"That's quite a large rod you have there, Mr. Hatter." He clenched his glute muscles involuntarily and a thread of saliva fell from his mouth onto his shirt. He slowly wiped his mouth with his sleeve, and looked his visitor right in the eye.

Xerxes saw the look on Rufus' face. _Lust. Pure lust._ It was not something Xerxes was used to seeing aimed in his direction. Before he could gather his thoughts, the auburn-haired man's lips were on his. He tried to pull away but the back of his head was pressed against the chair, and shortly after, he found himself straddled by the duke, whose hands were clenched around his face and neck. Xerxes put one arm around Rufus' waist and the other he used to help lift himself out of the chair, with the other man still clinging to him. He had half a mind to try to throw the duke down and run, but then that silky voice whispered in his ear:

"Take me to the bed and fuck me."

Xerxes pondered this for a brief moment and knew in his heart that he would gain a great deal of self-satisfaction if he could say to himself – during those moments of humiliation he sometimes faced as a servant – _I fucked Duke Barma up the ass_. Yes, he would love to be able to say that. Even if the only person he could ever say it to was himself.

A grin slowly crept across his face as he carried Rufus to the bedroom and eased him on top of the coverlet. The moment the duke went horizontal, the room seemed to shift about 180 degrees and the drug-zonked man didn't know whether he was on his back or his stomach.

"Roll over. _Rufus_." Xerxes said, sneering as he tore off his cravat and tossed it on the floor.

"Where am I?" Rufus murmured, wondering what kind of trouble his body was getting itself into while his mind was floating about in a haze of hallucination. He took a deep breath and tried to puzzle out the situation. _I feel velvet on my fingertips…must be the coverlet on my bed. I feel my trousers being tugged off. I feel so…strangely…aroused…_

Unexpectedly, Rufus found himself flipped over onto his stomach, his face pressed into the velvet fabric. He heard Xerxes rummaging through his bedside drawers, then the sound of the oil bottle being uncapped. Every sound seemed magnified, and he wondered if he really _was_ breathing as hard it sounded.

Xerxes had half a mind to ask Rufus to conjure up some imagery that _he_ would like to see, because the sight of Rufus' backside just wasn't doing it for him. But he wasn't going to embarrass himself like that. He practically willed himself erect, though the notion of being able to brag about fucking Duke Barma to anyone he desired – knowing full well he never would – was somewhat helpful in stirring his arousal. Slowly he eased himself inside the duke, and was rewarded not only with a tight, squeezing sensation, but also with some surprisingly unconstrained noises, that were unfortunately muffled by the coverlet.

"Mmm….uunnng!" groaned the auburn-haired man, clenching the velvet with his hands. He tried to bury his face, but could barely breathe when he did so. Certain he would die from overheating, he tore open his shirt in the front and felt Xerxes yank it the rest of the way off him.

_Now I've got him naked, too._ Xerxes chuckled to himself. He pushed in deeper and leaned over, his elbows on the bed. He was determined to fuck Rufus so hard he would eventually be forced partly off the bed – or at least get him over to the point where he could no longer hide his face in the coverlet, smothering those wanton noises he was making. And so he thrust forward, then back, forward, then back, while scooching forward on his knees and elbows, till they'd travelled nearly a foot during the course of the next few minutes.

"Guuhh!" cried Rufus, gasping as his head was forced off the side of bed into the open air. His long hair fell down to the floor, a cascading mess of sweaty rivulets, his face contorted by blissful agony. The room reeled forward, then back, in time to the thrusts the other man was exerting on his backside. Nothing existed for him at that moment, except for the painfully pleasant throbbing and the sensation that he was about to fall off a cliff.

"I'm…going…to…" he panted between choked sobs, then let loose a low, quivering moan.

Xerxes listened to the other man's suggestive vocalizations and filed them away into memory so that he'd be able to recall them the next time Duke Barma made some snarky comment at a Pandora meeting.

At this point, both of them were gripping the edge of the bed tightly so they wouldn't fall off and Xerxes turned his focus inward, eventually finding the means to spew forth the seed of his loin into the other man. He collapsed, panting, onto Rufus' back.

"I…can't…breathe…" Rufus hissed, pinned as he was by the other man.

"Uh? Oh…" Xerxes opened his eyes, slowly sat up and pulled out. He located Rufus' drawers on the edge of the bed and used them to wipe himself clean. Then he stood up and pulled on his trousers, wondering how soon he could leave without it seeming terribly rude.

"That _hurt_," Rufus said, his voice cracking a little as he wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. He slowly rolled on to his side to face Xerxes. "Such a _disagreeable pounding _you gave me, Mr. Hatter."

Xerxes put on his WTF face.

"You're really not in your right mind today, are you?" He walked over to the mirror and tied on his cravat. "You asked me to fuck you, and fuck you I did. I'd like to think I gave you a right proper _fucking_." Xerxes looked at his own face in the mirror and spent a few seconds practicing his evil grin. He picked his coat up off the floor and sauntered back to the bed. "If you don't mind, I'll be going now." He grinned, pulled on his coat, and then climbed into the sideboard. "Enjoy the rest of your evening. _Rufus_."

Too tired and dizzy to get up, Rufus curled into the fetal position and soon fell into a fitful sleep. He dreamed that his desire was an empty barrel, and that Xerxes Break kept popping in and out of it quite forcefully. Eventually the barrel shattered into pieces.

Rufus awoke in the middle of the night, dazed and shivering, wondering why his bottom was so sore. _Did Xerxes Break…? Was he really here? Or was I only imagining it?_ He managed to light a candle, locate his robe and pull it on, and then drank a glass of water. Then he stumbled into his study, and found some paper and ink. He scribbled a note:

_Order double shipment of weed._

After underlining the word "double," he capped the ink, and went back to bed. He crawled under the covers and fell asleep with a smile on his face.

END


End file.
